Legacies - What's Cupid's Problem?

Discussing Ep. 2.11

This episode really, really felt like a filler episode. There wasn't anything about it that really moved the more interesting storyline regarding Lizzie, Josie and Alaric and them being trapped in the prison world. For that reason, I really felt jipped with this episode and was disappointed on multiple levels.

Aside from the way he looked and the way he would eat the hearts of his victims, which I liked because it had a very creepy factor to it, this whole Cupid/Pothos storyline was just dumb. First of all.....he's a god! Like, a god from Greek/Roman mythology! He admitted as much. And yet, Hope was able to clip his wings with a pair of scissors? He was able to be bested by Landon through an herb he ate? Landon was able to tackle the guy in the woods?

HE'S A GOD!!!!

Maybe I'm too used to other franchises portraying gods as the powerful beings that they are thought to be, but here, he was barely more difficult to defeat than a vampire. That's sucks! I mean, I still remember when Buffy met Glory, and when she later found out that she wasn't a demon but rather a god.....that was just an epic moment! And true to form, it took so much to take Glory down because of the fact that she wasn't a mere demon but a hell god. It fucking meant something!

Here, regardless of the fact that Pothos was the brother of Cupid, he is still a god and should have been a lot more difficult to take down! He could have qualified as a season long villain given his nature (more on the villain problems later).

I think what my problem with both this episode and the last episode is that the show is becoming TOO lighthearted. I can accept that tone every now and then, but having Wade become a fairy and Landon trying to fly and having Pothos make a dog and a mail man fall in love and all of that....add to it the storyline regarding The Necromancer/Ted and his corny resurgence and also when they had Santa Claus beat down Krampus and so on that I feel like the show is getting too silly. I recognize that Legacies wasn't what TO was going to be or even what TVD was going to be, but I expected some degree of seriousness, some degree of having that darker tone to it, similar to what TVD used to have in the first 3 seasons and what TO was in its early seasons as well. I feel like they're trying to play it up too much for laughs and it's annoying.

Also, they're adding too much in terms of the mythical creatures and their powers. So now they have Wade, the Fairy, who sneezes pixie dust. And now Landon can fly. Unless they have him go like Super Saiyan with his powers or something along those lines....

....then I'm not interested. I have a feeling they're going to play up his ability to fly more for laughs than anything else and that's just going to be a waste of a cool power.

Also, I have get this out of the way: Landon and his insecurities. I was a huge fan of having Landon be this physically weak, insecure and normal guy who wasn't like Klaus or Damon or even Stefan because it was refreshing. He wasn't the stud who got the girl because he flashed his abs and played up the bad boy role. He was a normal guy who got the girl by being himself. But in this episode, they're now swinging too far in the wrong direction. While I can understand and even appreciate Landon's insecurity feeding his disbelief that he's with a girl like Hope at this point, him CONSTANTLY wondering out loud why it was that Hope chose him or what she sees in him or why she chooses to be with him....fuck man, ENOUGH!!!! If there is one thing that I've learned about women, it's that they get turned off really fast when a guy shows that kind of lack of self-confidence. While it's fine that Landon is being honest about things and isn't so full of himself, he's putting Hope too high on a pedestal and is believing too much that he's not worthy of her. That kind of attitude just doesn't fly....it just doesn't!

Especially with a girl like Hope, who has expressed, in the past, an interest for guys who exhibit attitudes that are very much the opposite of Landon's current attitude. Roman (from TO) and that football guy (Sheriff RIP's son) are guys who had that self confidence, that swagger. They didn't look at Hope as some goddess who was beyond them and felt unworthy to even talk to her as a result. And while Hope is beautiful and in the world of Legacies, she's this one-of-a-kind tri-brid that truly is unique in the world, she's not perfect. Especially in this episode, she came off as very impatient, very demoralizing, very bitchy. I guess that was the point but Landon just rolled over like a dog and took it. He didn't argue back or stand up for himself in any way. Hope not being put off by that is inconsistent with what we know of her so far. So I'm not impressed with that.

Also, we don't need TWO separate scenes of them being all lovey-dovey. That's annoying.

The MG/Alyssa/Kaleb/Kaleb's sister Kym storyline was pointless too. Kaleb being opposed to MG asking his sister out to the point of giving disinformation regarding Kym's personal preferences in an attempt to sabotage the date, only to be upset at seeing MG and Alyssa together later was just stupid. He didn't want Kym and MG together.....and he got his wish. So why was he upset?

And I said this before regarding Alyssa's history on the show....she has none! She just showed up but the way she went on, talking about how MG never noticed her and was pre-occupied with Lizzie and all of that. Yeah, wanna know why he didn't notice you? BECAUSE YOU WEREN'T ON THE SHOW!!! And Alyssa's character wasn't really developed other than we know she does have a softer side and has a crush on MG. But this whole storyline did nothing to make me care about these peripheral characters. Kym's involvement was moot because she barely showed up, barely helped the main characters and then bowed out at the end. So I don't get what the point was.

Nor do I get the point of this storyline. This was stupid as well. Who cares about Emma and Dorian? Certainly not me. And to add to the stupidity, they had Jared suddenly be in love with Emma. What the fuck? And they also really pissed me off with this line at the beginning, when Emma is in a rush to leave because she has to go and join Caroline to find a way to bring back Alaric and the Wonder Twins. Dorian replies that Caroline can get Bonnie to help her, that she doesn't need Emma. This is the problem with name-dropping all these TVD characters that have no intention of showing up. You're teasing the audience and also creating scenarios that are completely unbelievable for those said characters.

Remember when Caroline left the Twins, left Alaric and left everything in Mystic Falls and went to NOLA to help Klaus because he was going off the deep end? She didn't have to do that. She had better things to do in Mystic Falls. But she apparently cared that much and made the trip in order to help Klaus.

And yet, you're telling me that the minute Caroline heard that her daughters were trapped in a prison world, that not only did she NOT call Bonnie right away and ask for her help but also, she did NOT take the first flight out of Europe to go to Mystic Falls, did NOT interrogate Alyssa personally for answers and did NOT try everything in her powers to find a way to bring them back?

Bullshit!

They can write it off as Caroline staying in Europe to enlist the top witches there to help her find a way to bring them back....they can write it off that Caroline is trying to find Bonnie but is having a hard time doing so and therefore that's why she's not in Mystic Falls....they can write it off that she did indeed find Bonnie and together they're going to try and do what they can from wherever they are in Europe to create a new Ascendant and bring them back. They can do all of that, but it's still just bullshit at the end of the day. There is no world where Caroline doesn't hop on the first flight back to Mystic Falls, after getting in touch with Bonnie, to help in the effort to bring her daughters back.

Neither Kat nor Candice are ever going to appear on the show. And even if they did get Candice, no matter how much make up they put on her, she will not look like a 17 year old vampire. For that reason, either kill off both characters or just don't bother mentioning them again. I get that in the case of Caroline, it's hard not to mention her but it's just getting really tiresome now, always making up some excuse as to why she's not there in the thick of things. What kind of mother is she? What kind of friend is she? What kind of school administrator is she? She helped to open the Salvatore School. She ran it for a bit. But she's never there, for anything!

As for Ted (The Necromancer) being behind this eye thing and manipulating events....I like Ted but I fear they're falling into the trap that befell S5 of TVD, where there was no over-arching bad guy and they kept switching the Big Bad throughout the season. On the one hand, that's refreshing since you don't need it to be Malivore all the time. But Ted seems like a step down from Malivore, and yet they're still keeping Malivore around to provide little baddies to insert in individual episodes. And where is Kai going to fit in with all of this?

This episode really pissed me off and I'm hoping they can make it up with the next one with Kai. 

Manifest - Black Box

Discussing Ep. 2.4

Whatever advantage and goodwill that Saanvi and Vance built up in the last episode, they COMPLETELY lost in this episode!

Seriously, Vance more than anyone was made to look like a complete fool and The Major was made to look like an evil mastermind. I mean....why would Vance let Saanvi go in front of The Major with that story about a Swedish scientist with nothing more than "eat an apple or something" to hide her obvious attempted duping of The Major? I give them credit for having Saanvi practice with Vance in the first place, and he obviously knew not to underestimate The Major's skills in reading body language and detecting a lie. But his solution of Saanvi eating an apple to hide her fidgeting while telling The Major this tall tale in an attempt to trap her was just asinine!

I give props to The Major. Her leaving that apple in the room, that clear message that she knew what Saanvi was trying to do was just brilliant! But now, not only does The Major have Saanvi's legitimate research and a potential way to 'create' 828ers in a lab, but she potentially knows that Vance is still alive. At the very least, she knows that Saanvi is working with some kind of gov't organization that is rivalling hers. So, Vance has lost some serious ground here. I don't know necessarily what he could have done but I have a feeling that he was too impressed with Saanvi's abilities from last episode that he put too much trust in her. She's not a trained agent and so she wasn't ready.

Speaking of being impressed, I was impressed and happy that at least someone in the Stone family recognizes Olive's abilities and contributions. It annoyed me to no end when Cal and Grace both brushed off Olive's offers of help simply because she wasn't receiving the callings. At least Ben remembered what she could do and she didn't let him down here.

She immediately recognized what these symbols meant and you really have to sit there and wonder what would have happened had she not walked in at that precise moment that Ben and TJ were looking at this. This is sort of what gets me about these callings.....a lot of times they work on coincidence and even accidents. They were sort of on a time crunch here because had they not figured what this picture meant on that specific day when Logan Strickland was robbing that bank, what would have happened? Without Olive walking in at that very moment, they might have spent days, maybe even weeks trying to figure out what those symbols meant. It was only because of Olive that they got the running start that they needed and all of it just in time.

I'm also curious to know what this is about. The coincidence that Olive spoke to and was enamoured with TJ before he boarded flight 828 and now she's seeing him again.....is there going to be a higher purpose to this? Are they giving Olive this love interest for a reason or just for the sake of giving her a love interest? I can't imagine it's to give her more incentive to find a way to stop the Death Date because she already has enough incentive with her father, brother and aunt potentially losing their lives in 5 years. So I'm really wondering why they started this relationship now.

The bank robbing scene was interesting if not confusing. Again, I don't understand how the callings work and who is giving them. Maybe that's part of the mystery, but it's kind of dumb. "Bring him back." Both Zeke and Mick received this message. Thing is, they didn't really bring anybody back! Mick interpreted everything that happened as them bringing Logan's brother, Frank, back to him. But that's not how it happened at all. It was TJ and Ben that brought Frank back. And they didn't 'bring him back' as much as they brought them together. And Ben didn't even get a calling....it was TJ! And why did Zeke get the calling? He didn't do shit! Had he not been there, it wouldn't have made a difference. Yeah, he got that injured bank manager out to get proper medical treatment, but that's it. More than anything, he almost made things worse as he usually does. He tried to take down Logan and got bashed in the head for it. Beyond that, he was pretty much useless. Mick did the negotiating with the police. Mick talked to Logan and reasoned with him. Mick was the one who was more in charge of everything.

I know I'm rather hard on Zeke but the fact of the matter is, he's contributed nothing but problems in this particular season and I don't know what his role is. Therefore, why did he get the calling? What was it that he was supposed to do? The funny thing about these callings that I doubt they will answer because they can't is....how do they work? In this episode, the calling was time sensitive. Maybe Logan would have been able to hide out in the bank with hostages for a couple of days that would have allowed Mick and TJ and Ben to decipher what those symbols meant that would have lead to Frank Strickland and led them to that key and bringing Logan and Frank together again.

Maybe.

Beyond that though, what did Zeke contribute to all of it? He had no role to play so why did he get the calling? Just to get him and Mick to the point where they'd have sex? Fuck man....try flowers and a kind word if you want to get into Mick's pants, for crying out loud! Why does God or the Universe or whoever is directing these callings going to such lengths to get Zeke involved with Mick? Is it just so he can get laid by Mick? Really?

I will say that I was somewhat impressed with Jared. He did have Mick's back in this episode and didn't brush everything off when he heard it involved another calling. He didn't have to call Ben (which is, again, another bit of contrivance. Had he not called Ben, they never would have connected the dots between TJ's vision and Logan and the safety deposit box key). And if he gets to relieve all this stress and anxiety and what not over Mick with this bartender....power to him! Maybe it will draw him back from that edge of being an intolerable asshole. And yet, this bartender has a brother who is a hardcore anti-828er and Jared bought him a drink last episode. So I'm wondering if he's still going to go down this path and become an obstacle for Mick and Ben or remain an ally.

As far as the calling and Logan's watch having the peacock on it....I was glad that they revisited this symbol from last season because we never got an answer on it. But again, how did it all work out like this? Logan got a Death Date vision, seeing his own grave with June 2, 2024 on it, the same as Cal saw. But in this case, it corresponded with 6224 which was the locker number that held his father's watch. So is this the Universe/God telling them that there is a way to escape the Death Date? Why get the vision now? And why wouldn't Cal get part of the vision? Why didn't Ben? Why TJ? Logan's grandfather and father both held this watch and it saved them under incredible odds from dying, so I could understand why he would see it as his salvation too. But how in the world is that going to help all the 191 passengers from dying in 5 years? And now that Ben has it, what does that mean for Logan? He's going to jail for a while so now he's leaving his fate in the hands of Ben and Co. What if they can't figure it out? I really hope they tie everything together somehow because there are so many elements that I can't see them explaining it all.

Finally, I just want to say that I was seriously wrong about Troy.

He came off a bit strong with Saanvi, bordering on creepy especially with what was going on with The Major. But he was merely interested in dating Saanvi, not wanting to ensnare her for The Major. Now he unwittingly got caught up in all of this and is, most likely, dead. That kind of sucks, man.

I wonder how many more casualties will come because of The Major. We'll see.

Manifest - False Horizons

Discussing Ep. 2.3

This really was the Saanvi show, both in a good and bad sense. I'll get the bad out of the way first.

This was probably the only time we actually saw Saanvi smile in happiness at all this episode, because the rest of the time, she was upset. sad, anxious, fearful or pissed off! We got a small glimpse of her background story last season and it felt like I was more distracted by Ben and Grace and The Major and all of that so her backstory kind of fell to the wayside. But considering that the idea of Saanvi and Ben getting together was a major potential last season, I look at that coupling now and realize that that could have set up a very dangerous pattern for Saanvi in the arena of love. Reason being, because of this:

This was a bombshell! Was Saanvi the 'other woman?' Was she a homewrecker? I'm hoping we get some kind of clarification for this because this puts everything under a whole new light and puts her character, to a small degree, in a somewhat bad light. Also, I feel less sympathy for her at the beginning of the episode when she's waiting for her guy on the plane, realizing now that he was a married man going on a vacation with Saanvi. Not a good look at all!

Having said that though, she went through a lot of pain in this episode. First, she had to sort of re-live that experience with her ex after the Major tells her to finally come to terms with her past. Then Ben goes and tries to dupe her, telling her about this made up 828er who was getting massive callings. I never understood why they didn't go and ask Saanvi about who she was talking to in the first place. I didn't understand how it was that Vance was monitoring her movements and yet he didn't know that she was going and seeing a therapist. He had vans and monitoring equipment watching her every move and yet he didn't realize that she had been seeing a therapist?

I honestly thought that Ben had screwed everything up though when he did reveal everything to Saanvi. Not that him telling her was necessarily bad, but the way he told her. He told her everything in her fucking office! He told her how Vance was still alive and that they were aware that there was a mole that was stealing information about her research. For fuck's sakes, Saanvi's office could have been bugged for all Ben knew! I didn't have a problem telling Saanvi the truth because at least they could have figured out all the people she talked to and narrowed down the list of suspects. But to tell her everything while in her office? Stupid!

 
At the end of the day though, Saanvi redeemed herself big time. I kind of figured she'd test The Major by revealing that bit about her research findings being locked up in her fridge. Just the way that she said it gave that hint that she was at least suspicious of her therapist. And sure enough, The Major fell for it. So now it's a Spy vs. Spy kind of game going on between The Major and her players and Vance and his players.

Speaking of the players, seems I was wrong about Troy. Looks like he may not be involved with The Major after all.....for now. However, I knew that we would be introduced to another covert agent. One I did guess while the other took me by surprise.

Like I said before, I'm suspicious of everyone at this point, and Simon White seemed a tad bit too eager to work with Ben. Though I do have to wonder....he got into contact with Ben through Ben's friend and fellow student (and seemingly former love interest) that we were introduced to in the last episode. And that was just by chance, or was it? So was this part of the plan all along? How could Simon or The Major coordinate everything to have Ben apply for a professor's job at the school in order to get involved with Simon himself?

The other mole that I didn't see and totally took me by surprise was Grace's new friend, Erica. And we get Grace's calling that involves a gargoyle.

I really hope that we get some kind of explanation as to how these callings work and who are the ones giving them the callings. I have a feeling that we won't, that it's just going to be brushed aside because none of it makes sense. Why does Grace get the callings in her own voice? Why are the calling and visions so abstract and so vague that the receiver has no idea how to proceed and how to follow the callings? I don't blame Grace for snapping at Erica when Erica took verbal shots at Cal and wished that Grace's baby dies. How could Grace interpret "open her eyes" as meaning that she had to warn Erica as to what she's getting into by getting involved with Simon and The Major. How is she supposed to connect Erica with the gargoyle at the school?

I have to believe that we're going to see Erica more often at the school, possibly picking up Simon and that Grace is going to put two and two together but it seemed like a real long stretch to make the connection.

As for Zeke, I was impressed that they found the loophole that was able to get him out of jail. I'm glad that Zeke acknowledged that he fucked things up and made things worse. I kind of get the impression that they went through this whole sequence of events to accomplish two things....to build up the relationship between Zeke and Mick and to solidify that relationship, and to make an enemy of Jared. On the relationship between Zeke and Mick, I still don't feel it. Maybe it's because they're pushing so hard through Cal and visions and what not to make it seem like destiny or fate that Zeke and Mick end up together. Perhaps I don't buy the relationship because at this point, that's the only thing that connects them. We haven't really seen them connect with each other beyond that.

As for Jared....damn! He has fallen so far from grace that it's incredible. I gave him a ton of credit last season for putting everything on the line for Mick and he went through a lot, despite having no understanding as to what was going on or what the callings were all about. And now, he's buying drinks for anti-828ers and adopting this overall asshole mentality. I suppose I could understand the hurt and pain that he's going through because what he said was right.....he essentially gave up his life for Mick and she rebuffs him....again....for a guy she just met. This would be the second time that Mick has hurt Jared, the first being when she never replied to his proposal before she disappeared. So I can understand why Jared is hurting and is adopting this mentality. Still, it's disappointing.

And finally, I'm interested to see where they go with the Olive storyline. Again, she's being pushed aside, not being involved in the callings and as a result, she feels left out. While I write this particular group off as a bunch of overly zealous and delusional fanatics that don't understand what the 828 flight was all about.....the fact is nobody does. The callings, as I said before, are vague and really more unhelpful than helpful in terms of getting the receiver to accomplish a specific task. And while I question whether the 828er running the church (I forget his name) is sincere or is merely trying to play on the fears and desperation of people, including other 828ers, I suppose I can't blame Olive for going there and trying to find a place to belong. She doesn't feel like a part of her own family, while she is still connected with Flight 828 and it's all around her. At least here, she feels special where at home, she doesn't feel special at all because the others are all getting callings and she's not. However, I do wonder now if The Major is going to exploit this church in some way, if she hasn't already, and somehow get to Ben and his new baby through Olive. I could totally see that.

So now The Major has been exposed. She appeared to Saanvi as Erica.....but now we know who she really is. Kathryn Fitz. And her history in Black Ops. is rather extensive, so much so that I wonder if Vance is sweating a bit in regards as to what he's dealing with. She's the real deal! But is she working for the gov't or is this her own personal project. She has gov't resources at her disposal so I suppose she has gov't approval, so how is Vance going to combat that?

It's a chess game with high stakes now!